Mongabay *duh

Stream in the middle of a new oil palm plantation. Oil palm cultivation is a lucrative form of land use in Indonesia, but the new study suggests that it may have unintended impacts on local livelihoods by degrading water quality. Other research has raised concerns that shifting from agroforestry to oil palm reduces income diversification, leaving communities vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of palm oil. Oil palm plantations are not only encroaching on forests, they are also degrading water quality, finds a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences . The research, conducted by scientists in the U.S. and Indonesia, compared the properties of streams draining mature and immature oil palm plantations, agroforestry areas, and logged and old-growth forests. It found that streams flowing through oil palm plantations were hotter, dirtier, an...